


a meaning, for all this pain

by dear_dunyazade



Category: Ghost Quartet - Malloy
Genre: Don't Try This At Home, F/F, F/M, Gen, I mean what'd you expect, Multiple Lives, Time Travel, a bit out of character because I know Rose wasn't really that regretful but let me Live, blink and you'll miss it reference to Princess Mary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-27 00:50:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13869558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dear_dunyazade/pseuds/dear_dunyazade
Summary: Rose Red is young, and wants nothing more than revenge.





	a meaning, for all this pain

Rose Red did not believe anything Scheherazade said. Truly. She was a storyteller; why would that change when she wasn’t spinning a tale for her husband? Rose Red wasn’t very sure if she even liked her. She looked too much like Pearl, anyway: the long, pretty, dark hair, the hair the Astronomer’s fingers had been entwined in the night she found them. Big, dark, owlish eyes, full of wonder and gentle caring, yet also some strange indifference. Rose Red could forgive her for that; 1,001 nights of that man--the Shah something-or-other--that grown baby would make her lose any care for anything, too. 

And yet, with a few little half-smiles, a nod during Scheherazade’s tale of her dream, she managed it. The Stardust was finally hers. Despite Rose's best efforts, she couldn't describe how the woman strung the gold into her hands, the feeling tingling and warm, like a star would. Or something Rose didn't know how to describe just yet. As Rose turned to leave, Scheherazade held up a finger, to tell her “Wait, don’t go yet.” Maybe she had more words for Rose. Maybe she was seeing who she was under the cape and carefully-picked dress that looked a little too much like one of little Dunyazade’s, or maybe she just didn’t want someone to leave so soon. Rose could see the yearning for someone to talk to, and even while Rose had time, nothing but Stardust and time...

“Well, too goddamned bad,” Rose Red muttered to herself. “Sometimes we don’t all get what we wanted, isn’t that right, Pearl?” She scowled as she trudged through the desert. She was off to her next life.

 

Roxie was quite an intriguing little girl. Quite intriguing. She read, she danced, she was so...happy. 

Rose despised it. She was Rose now. The long-gone, long-dead sister who haunted the sweet, living daughter. Rose didn’t really know what she was here for. Roxie didn’t seem like she’d be dying any time soon, so no ghost pictures (whatever that was), and even her mother or father didn’t seem too keen on it either. She couldn’t grab any of the honey they had with these useless soul hands. And she knew Roxie was too old for a baptism (besides, Rose thought: she’d already had one, when she was barely days old). So she smiled at Roxie the night she appeared, a spectre, floating above Roxie’s little bed. Roxie didn’t cry, didn’t scream for her mommy or daddy. She smiled, giggling, flinging off her covers and reaching up to Rose. 

Despite lacking any natural 'maternal instinct,' Rose picked her up, smiling kindly. (How ridiculous is it that she could pick up a small human girl but not a pot of honey?) She spoke to her quietly, and waited when Roxie fell back asleep quite quickly for her to wake back up. And she waited for years, almost eighteen years. And Roxie grew up with her sister, no matter what Lady Usher said. Pearl knew she was there. Pearl just didn’t want her there. Eventually, Rose got what she needed in this life. What Pearl extremely didn’t want, which made it all the better.

“Maybe I didn’t want to wait sixteen years to steal a baby,” Rose mumbled, almost to the ocean now. The Starchild was sleeping soundly in her arms, wrapped in a blanket too big for it. And Rose dipped it in the water, praying things she remembered from lives she knew and lives she will know and the life she knew now. She recited the prayers the Usher’s would say at dinner; the choirs she remembered reverberating in a Persian palace; the hymns a future her would hum as she sat alone in a church. A brief future, she hoped. She didn’t want to stay sixteen years in any place, ever again, especially in solitude. And as she stood on a stranger’s back porch, holding a still-sleeping Starchild, giving her one first and last kiss on the forehead, she almost wished she could stay with the young thing. Almost.

 

Her wishes were kept. She found Soldier quickly, but didn’t know how she ever considered them a ‘lover.’ They were unkempt, and impatient, and sad, oh, so sad, and yet... Rose couldn’t get enough. She had the Stardust, and the baptism, she knew, but she barely bothered with what to think this life would be for. 

‘God, please don’t be the photo of a ghost,’ she thought as they danced. She still didn’t even know what a photo was yet; this didn’t help her anxiety in any way.

It didn't even matter, really, if they were supposed to be the ghost, they said. Soldier didn’t believe in ghosts, they said. They said how they’ve got no fears of it, of death or anything like it. As they murmured these words, for just a moment, Rose felt any and all beliefs fly away, hiding like hibernating bears. Soldier didn't believe in anything, and they made sure Rose knew this as they placed the gun in her hands. They said it was their time. She immediately felt the tears welling up inside her, admittedly knowing it was time, but not wanting to let go just yet. Even if she felt the world greying and rippling. Soldier promised her the honey, and in the few dances and hand-holds they had, Rose felt as if she could stay here forever, on the dancefloor, hand on her love’s back, keeping them held and close, keeping her Soldier save forever. But they were persistent. They knew she loved them for the honey, the honey in their pocket and the supposed honey Rose felt as she kissed the Soldier’s lips one last time. Rose just wanted to stay. Rose didn’t want the tears running down her face, or the blood spitting onto her. She didn’t even want to touch the honey.

But as she said, all those years ago, we can’t always get what we want.

 

She liked this new life. It was her in a small town, living alone above a coffee shop, living as a photographer. She’d learned what photographs even were: frozen memories in paper form. She liked them. She liked memories. Not necessarily her memories, but… happier ones. She liked that she got to save moments in time, for other people, who didn't have to remember anything for themselves because she can help make them remember when they look at the pictures.

Two sisters, from out of town. The older sister was pretty and smart, and the younger was sweet and silly.

A pair of siblings, smiling gently for the camera. Not fake, not scornful; just soft. The sister holds onto her brother, staring into space often, seemingly shaken back to reality only with her brother saying her name. Something starting with ‘R.’

A couple, a young woman and her love. They held each other as if they’re the only things they had left. By the look in their eyes’, that very well might have been true.

Rose can’t seem to place any other faces clearly in her memory. Maybe a different couple, aged, a bit apart from the other, but no faces to the memory.

Rose can’t seem to understand why she’s on a subway platform. She’d taken her commute, a 25-minute walk which seemed horrifying in this muggy 70° weather. But she was still here. Maybe she knew it’d be a slow day. Maybe she didn’t even want to go out into the world yet.

Maybe it was time for the photo already. Nothing but the platform really seemed that grey, though. And there was only two other people in the entire platform. Rose briefly wondered which it would be. The man seemed drunk, so maybe he’d collapse and never get back up. Maybe the girl would just randomly get a heart attack. Rose noticed, she had a cane, which she leaned on as she played on her phone. The object was blaring some obnoxious music, something Rose hadn’t heard before, and before she realized it, she was scowling and nearly hoping the girl would be the one to be the ghost in the photo. Then she softened, realizing what exactly she’d just thought. She heard the train coming, anyway. No time for thinking. She had to get on the train… go back home. No bother taking her pretty little pictures today. Maybe she’d just take pictures of trees and flowers outside her home. Maybe it wasn’t grey outside.

The screaming drunk man was all Rose could hear for a moment. And the music. And the train. It was stopping soon. Everything seemed to be stopping. Slowly. Painfully slowly.

Oh God, couldn’t she just get the picture? Then it’d all be over. It’d be fixed. 

But as she heard the last scream, as she raised up her camera, clicking, the flash lighting the grey platform, she knew the reality. Nothing is fixed yet. 

As she drops the pot of honey in front of the bear, growls her hate in the most unshaken voice she could manage, she knows it will never be fixed. 

As she throws Pearl into the unforgiving river, everything was gone. There was nothing left for her. Nothing she could do now. Pearl was already long down the stream by the time Rose realized what she’d even done. 

Later, Rose Red reached for the sixth bottle of the night. It was night. Or morning. Or the end of the world. Who the fuck knew? Nothing was out there for her. 

Nothing was ever out there for her. She knew that, but she just didn’t want it to be truth. She wanted herself back. She wanted Pearl back. Not some sad Soldier, not a mother who cried every day and was barely alive, not a storyteller in a strange place. Pearl White, the salt-gatherer, the drinker, the writer, the lover of some wicked man Rose slowly began to forget, her sister.  
Goddamit, she’s crying again. So she drinks again. And again, and again, and again, and again… 


End file.
